Social Life Through Literature: A Suggested Strategy for Conducting a Literary Ethnography

Abstract

Abstract This paper presents a strategy for utilizing literary documents for the purpose of social description and analysis. It is argued that literature in the realist tradition can be used to generate a “literary ethnography” or composite portrait of social and historical phenomena. This is accomplished through the identification of dominant themes within a collection of literary works. A six stage procedure and set of guidelines for conducting such an investigation are outlined and discussed. The development of this approach, illustrations of it use, and discussion of its merits suggest that literature is a valuable source of “evidence” concerning social phenomena including those dimensions of personal and social life we may have little access to when using other research strategies.